Interscope Records

Ted Field, the financier who co-founded Interscope Records and helped turn it into a music industry juggernaut, is stepping down from the company. Field, who started the label from scratch in 1991 with record producer Jimmy Iovine, may concentrate on his film company, sources said. Vivendi's Universal Music acquired a half-stake in the label for $200 million in 1996, buying the rest about two years later and folding the Geffen and A&M labels into it.

A Top Dawg is on top of the Billboard 200. Schoolboy Q, part of the Black Hippy rap crew signed to L.A.'s Top Dawg Entertainment, debuted at No. 1 on Wednesday with "Oxymoron," the first of his three albums to be released by TDE in partnership with Interscope Records. The disc sold 139,000 copies in the week ending March 2, according to Nielsen SoundScan, enough to score Top Dawg its first No. 1 album. In 2012, Schoolboy Q's Black Hippy bandmate Kendrick Lamar debuted at No. 2 with "good kid, m.A.A.d city," which went on to sell 1.2 million copies and earned a Grammy nomination for album of the year.

MCA Inc. entered into high-level talks Thursday to purchase a 50% stake in Interscope Records, the controversial Westwood-based label that Time Warner Inc. dumped four months ago following a national controversy over rap music lyrics. Although no contract has been signed and several elements of the deal are still to be resolved, key sources predicted that an agreement will be consummated before Monday.

August 14, 2013 | By Randall Roberts, Los Angeles Times Pop Music Critic

Detroit rapper Eminem released the first glimpse of his forthcoming, as-yet-untitled new album via a “Call of Duty: Ghost” trailer on Wednesday, and it shows a man focused on a return to greatness as voluminous, venom-filled and explosive as the visuals that the song soundtracks. Called “Survival,” the track shows the man born Marshall Mathers at an aggressive peak, delivering cuss-filled lines about his return: “I'm … back again with another anthem/Why stop when it doesn't have to end?

Two months after Time Warner Inc. severed ties with Interscope Records, the controversial label is being wooed aggressively by four of the media giant's major rivals. Moreover, what may have been a smart move politically for Time Warner is now looking like a financial fiasco. Sources close to the bidding say the price to acquire a 25% stake in the Westwood label has risen to about $125 million--roughly what Interscope agreed to pay Time Warner for the half-share it is buying back.

October 24, 1993 | ROBERT HILBURN and CHUCK PHILIPS, Robert Hilburn is The Times' pop music critic. Chuck Philips writes about pop music for Calendar

Jimmy Iovine, whose credits as a record producer and engineer range from John Lennon to U2, still winces at the humiliation of being turned down by everyone he approached in 1989 to invest in the record company he wanted to start. "People took my calls and they took me to their house for dinner," says the 40-year-old son of a Brooklyn longshoreman. "But I could sense a lot of them thinking, 'He's no record company president . . . he's no David Geffen.'

Vice President Dan Quayle, broadening his attack on Hollywood, Tuesday blasted the recording industry for producing rap music that he said had led to violence. Quayle called on the Time Warner Inc. subsidiary, Interscope Records, to withdraw the album "2pacalypse Now" by rap artist Tupac Amaru Shakur from stores.

Trauma Records said Tuesday it sued Interscope Records seeking $100 million in damages for alleged breach of contract and fraud in a deal involving the hit pop band No Doubt. The lawsuit alleges that Interscope, which is half-owned by Seagram Co., assigned No Doubt's recording contract to Trauma in 1995 when it was a relatively unknown band but then reneged after the group became immensely popular. Interscope and Trauma have had a distribution pact since 1994.

August 14, 2013 | By Randall Roberts, Los Angeles Times Pop Music Critic

Detroit rapper Eminem released the first glimpse of his forthcoming, as-yet-untitled new album via a “Call of Duty: Ghost” trailer on Wednesday, and it shows a man focused on a return to greatness as voluminous, venom-filled and explosive as the visuals that the song soundtracks. Called “Survival,” the track shows the man born Marshall Mathers at an aggressive peak, delivering cuss-filled lines about his return: “I'm … back again with another anthem/Why stop when it doesn't have to end?

Most Hollywood animated movies feature stars well-known to U.S. audiences. But when Disney opens its 3-D film “Planes” on Friday, it will include a voice unfamiliar to filmgoers on this side of the world: Priyanka Chopra. The Bollywood star, 31, voices Pan-Asian racer Ishani, a yellow-and-orange-hued flyer complete with a delicate green henna design on its nose, in the new “Cars” spinoff about a crop-duster that dreams of aerial stardom. “It's like breathing air into a cartoon,” the Mumbai resident said in a recent interview in Hollywood, where she had come for, among other things, the film's premiere.

The controversial -- and nudity-filled -- video for Robin Thicke's " Blurred Lines " has attracted so much attention lately that one might assume it's behind the song's seven-week stint atop the Hot 100, an impressive reign that Billboard described this week as the longest so far in 2013. But "Blurred Lines" isn't just inescapable online -- it's also a fixture on the airwaves. According to a press release issued Friday by Thicke's label, Interscope Records, "Blurred Lines" has "broken the record for the highest radio audience ever recorded.

When Eve's last album was released, Kanye West was known only as a producer, Drake was playing an awkward teenager on Canadian TV and waitress Nicki Minaj was slinging Red Lobster's famous cheddar biscuits. To say a lot has changed is an understatement. More than 11 years after that album, countless delays, a focus on acting and more than a few growing pains, the Grammy Award winner's long gestating fourth album, "Lip Lock," dropped last week. "For some reason it all came together at this moment.

Hip-hop star Dr. Dre and music mogul Jimmy Iovine are scheduled to announce Wednesday a $70-million donation to USC for a new academy that they say will give students new facilities and the tools they need to break into the rapidly changing music industry. “I feel like this is the biggest, most exciting and probably the most important thing that I've done in my career,” Dre, whose given name is Andre Young, told the New York Times . The donation will establish the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation.

April 17, 2013 | By Randall Roberts, Los Angeles Times Pop Music Critic

One of the most hyped soundtracks of the upcoming movie season is for “The Great Gatsby,” Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of the classic F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. For those who didn't do their assigned reading in high school, the story takes place in the 1920s in the fictional Long Island setting of East Egg and West Egg. As such, the book happens at the birth of the Jazz Age, when high-energy brass bands worked with stomping, New Orleans-inspired rhythms...

Interscope Records has struck a domestic distribution agreement with the 3-year-old Almo Sounds label, supplanting Almo's former deal with Geffen Records. Interscope is half-owned by Seagram's Universal Music Group; Geffen Records is fully owned by Universal. Almo will integrate its marketing and promotional operations with Interscope, but will also add a regional promotions department and publicist in-house.

Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. said it agreed to an exclusive marketing and promotional alliance with Interscope Records and its chairman, Jimmy Iovine. Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed. The New York subscription-based satellite radio broadcaster said Iovine would be a creative advisor in the development of Sirius programming. Interscope, a division of Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group, will offer marketing and promotional opportunities with its artists.

Haley Reinhart, the bluesy ingenue who placed third on the 10th season of "American Idol," has parted ways with Interscope Records and 19 Recordings, a source close to the singer confirmed to Pop & Hiss on Tuesday. The 22-year-old's post-“Idol” debut, “Listen Up!,” was quietly issued in late May, just as a new victor was crowned. The album debuted at No. 17 on the Billboard 200 after it logged 20,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan. “Listen Up!

September 26, 2010 | By Emili Vesilind, Special to the Los Angeles Times

Live on Sunset, the sprawling fashion boutique that occupies the old Tower Records space on the Sunset Strip, is one of L.A.'s best-kept shopping secrets. Stocked with dozens of premium denim and contemporary brands — and featuring spacious footwear, accessories, apothecary and lingerie departments — it feels like a freestanding department store, sans the hassle of hitting up a mall. And soon the shop — which is outfitted with a large stage and high-tech DJ booth — will be partnering with Interscope Records on a series of shows that will stream live performances and celebrity appearances from the store to the Internet via the music label's Vevo Network.